Blog #168...August, 2025
Last blog, I mentioned the show 52 Women, which took on the difficult task of choosing a finite number of women who have transformed Toronto. Of course there have been many many more, coming from all eras, areas and walks of life. and it's fun to compose your own list. The show runs at the City of Toronto Museum, enter at the east corner of 401 Richmond Street, until December.
Also in early days of a long run is an amazing show of Joyce Wieland's work (she'd certainly make my list!) at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Although I was aware of her, I had no idea of the tremendous range she covered. Another surprize was her passion for Canada which is expressed in many of her pieces. It's particularly touching in the current climate to see huge Canadian flags - stocking stitched in red and white wool and only a decade old in the 70's when they were created. And her Oh Canada piece, rows of images of her red lips articulating each syllable of out national anthem.
Her nationalism was matched by her environmental concerns, particularly for the Arctic region. She often worked very large. The first image when I entered the show has been transported from the exit at Kendall from the Spadina subway station. A dozen caribou, pretty much life size, are in different postures on an ice floe. It's executed in quilted cloth and has a realistic three dimensional quality adding to its power. I sat opposite it for half an hour and could almost feel a cool breeze,
CBC's IDEAS has been featuring artists lately and had back-to-back shows on Joyce Wieland and Joan Jonas recently.. Striking similarities were their overshadowing by male artist/partners, Joan by Richard Serra and Joyce by Michael Snow. And they both had to wait decades before being recognized by one woman shows at major galleries in their home countries, although they were both recognized internationally. MOMA exhibited Joan's work last year, she's still alive and active at 89, spending time between her studio in NYC and Cape Breton where she landed with a group of American artists in the 50's.
Joyce died in 1998 at 66, without the satisfaction of recogition in her hometown but leaving us with the joy of appreciating her work at the AGO.
As the song goes, it's been too damn hot lately, but it's given me anyway a chance to slow down, spend hours stretched out reading. Paula Hawkins followed The Girl on the Train with a series of psyuchological thrillers that engrossed me as I ignored other things I might be doing.
I'm asking many questions of the world right now, least important is what has happened to those cucumbers we used to have, the chubby ones with slight bristles, like a chin or a shin needing a shave? They seem to have been replaced by long thin ones wrapped in plastic, I'm grumpy about it and it's distracting me for a moment from other horrors.
This just in, I saw the production of Macbeth at Stratford yesterday. Purists will be recoiling in horror as conflicts in The Scotish Play are rendered as biker wars. I found it a tribute to Shakespeare's grasp of basic, sometimes barbaric human behaviour and its timeless inevitability, especially right now...but that's just me.
Sending this off into the blogosphere with my regards to readers in various parts of the world, I know you're out there enjoying glimpses of Canada.
Back in September\.
